Two ways to make Gazpacho, the refreshing summer soup (that's really a watery salad)

Recipe Redux: 1968: Gazpacho – by AMANDA HESSER

Although gazpacho has been around since as early as the eighth century in Spain , it took New Yorkers until the 1960’s to catch on. And even then it took them more than a few years to get it right. In 1968, Craig Claiborne , then The Times’s food editor, published a recipe for a refreshing, straightforward version from a home cook named Manola Drozdoski that was made with tomatoes, cucumbers, green pepper, garlic and the rest, which Claiborne called “Málaga Gazpacho.” The thought was a nice tribute to an obscure city in southern Spain, except that Málaga (and its region, Andalusia ) doesn’t have just one version of gazpacho but many — some made with egg, others with fish, potato and mayonnaise. If anything, Málaga is associated with ajo blanco, a gazpacho made with almonds and garlic.

No real harm done. Given America’s record for tampering with pizza, croissants and lattes, doctrinal purity is hardly the point. Besides, gazpacho is a survivor, a poor man’s soup, thickened with yesterday’s bread and sharpened with vinegar, so there is little you can do to wreck it. In its original form, it was more of a bread soup mashed with olive oil, garlic, vinegar and water. (Tomatoes came later, after the discovery of the New World and all the ingredient confusion that wrought.)

Over the centuries, gazpacho took on regional refinements, sometimes being made with ground almonds or pine nuts, sometimes featuring peppers, even the occasional sliced grape. It also varied in texture, from a thick purée (referred to as salmorejo) to a chunky, chopped-salad-like consistency to a thin liquid drunk by the glass. Today many Spaniards keep a pitcher of gazpacho in the fridge much as we might keep iced tea.

Earlier this summer, I gave the Málaga gazpacho recipe to Michael Tusk, the chef and an owner of Quince Restaurant in San Francisco , to see what it would inspire in him. Deceit, at first: Tusk said he had to sneak around the San Francisco farmer’s market in a hooded sweatshirt with a bag of local hot-house tomatoes, hoping that none of his watchdog chef friends would catch him with the contraband.

Back in the privacy of his kitchen, Tusk stripped out all of the flavors from the original recipe and essentially gave each ingredient its own stage. He ran a variety of tomatoes through a food mill to get a dense base. Into this, Tusk floated a simple cucumber granita, given a little zip with cucumber vinegar (although Champagne vinegar also works).

The rest of the ingredients he treated as garnishes, poising them on the lip of the soup bowl to mix in at your leisure. Cubes of bread and slivers of garlic were fried in olive oil; peppers and Serrano chilies were finely minced; cherry tomatoes were peeled (the only maddening part of the recipe, though worth the tedium).

The two soups share a shopping list but little else. One is a smooth, poignant expression of summer flavors. The other keeps your palate riveted, as each spoonful carries bursts of pepper, the crunch of bread and the stinging chill of granita. In keeping with Times tradition, it still has nothing to do with Málaga.

1968: Málaga Gazpacho

This recipe is from Manola Drozdoski, a home cook. It appeared in a Times article by Craig Claiborne.

3 cups cored, coarsely chopped fresh tomato
1 1/2 cups peeled, coarsely chopped cucumber
1 green pepper, cored, seeded and coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, sliced
1/2 cup water
5 tablespoons olive or corn oil
1/4 cup red- or white-wine vinegar
Salt to taste 1/2
2 slices untrimmed fresh white bread, cubed.

1. Combine all the ingredients in the container of an electric blender. Blend at high speed, pausing now and then to scrape down with a rubber spatula as necessary.

2. Pour the mixture through a large sieve placed inside a mixing bowl. Press and stir with a wooden spoon to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard the solids. Taste soup for seasoning and add more salt and vinegar if desired. Chill thoroughly before serving. Serves 6.

2006: Gazpacho With Cucumber Granita

By Michael Tusk of Quince Restaurant in San Francisco.

2 cups peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped cucumber
1 tablespoon cucumber
vinegar (see note) or Champagne vinegar
Salt
3 pounds Persimmon or Golden Jubilee (large red or yellow) tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped (about 6)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 slices country bread, crusts removed, cut into _ -inch cubes
1/4 cup finely chopped shallot
1/4 cup finely chopped green pepper
2 tablespoons minced Serrano chili
1 cup grape, cherry or sweet 100’s tomatoes, blanched and peeled.

1. Chill 6 shallow soup bowls in the refrigerator. To make the cucumber granita: Place the cucumber in a food processor and pulse until smooth. Stir in the cucumber vinegar and salt, to taste, and place in a shallow, wide pan in the freezer. Run a fork through the granita every 20 minutes for approximately 2 hours. Keep in the freezer until ready to serve. (This can be done the day before.)

2. Pass the tomatoes through a food mill using the finest attachment, then strain the tomato juice through a fine-meshed sieve. Season with salt (about 6 pinches) and chill in the refrigerator.

3. Place a medium sauté pan over medium-high heat; add the olive oil. When warm, fry the garlic until golden; use a slotted spoon to transfer to paper towels. Season with salt and set aside. In the same oil, add the cubed bread and fry until golden. Remove with a slotted spoon, then drain on paper towels and season with salt.

4. Ladle the chilled soup into the chilled bowls. Float a large tablespoonful of granita in the center of each bowl. Arrange the garnishes (garlic, bread cubes, shallot, green pepper, chili and cherry tomatoes) around the rims, or serve them separately and pass around at the table. Serves 6.

NOTE: An 8.5-ounce bottle of Gegenbauer cucumber vinegar is $32 at Dean & Deluca, 560 Broadway, (212) 226-6800, and $33 at www.dibruno.com.